: Re: How do I define smells I have never experienced? I am a lifelong writer, who was also born without an ability to smell. I have been trained to engage the reader by applying the five senses,

@Si5022468

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I really just have a couple of suggestions to add to the previous answers and it mostly builds on Guy Gordon's answer. There are many 'primary' smells (like primary colors) that are based off specific chemicals. These smells show up anywhere that the chemicals are present. Ammonia is a great example. I can't tell you what ammonia smells like, but anyone that has smelled it will readily identify it in many places like bathroom cleaners, or the stifling smell of an industrial poultry farm, or the smell of urine. Hydrogen Sulfide is another potent scent and not a good one. It has a rotten egg smell and is what gives farts their bad smell. There is an entire branch of Organic Chemistry that focuses on "aromatics" named as such because they have distinct aromas that are normally fairly strong.
Now I would also agree that it's better to describe specific smells that are unique to a place, event, or a thing, rather than a generic peppering of some default chemical odors. Considering the ammonia example above, think of it more as adding to your palette of smells not as a specific smell itself (although it is actually a smell in itself). But what I mean is all those other smells, the poultry farm, urine, etc, are different shades.

The other thing I'm going to suggest is more along the lines of CJ Dennis's answer. I'm not saying you shouldn't write about smell, after all people write compelling stories all the time from voices and perspectives apart from their own (men write compelling women characters, women write compelling men characters, sighted people write a blind person, etc). But you shouldn't worry about turning off readers because your writing doesn't dive too much into the scents of your worlds. If you describe a flower garden, a reader will fill it with their own imagination of scents. Writers rarely describe what the voice of a character sounds like, but we all 'hear' them anyways when they speak.
But if you still want to write the smells into your world, and you're prepared to stumble quite a bit, then go for it! Try to do lots of research, read books that feature scent (like Perfume by Patrick Suskind), and get lots of feedback from your friends who have more experience smelling things.

Also, a little about myself, is I have almost the opposite problem you have. I normally have a slightly above average ability to smell, but have occasional bouts with hyperosmia that can make even faint perfumes overwhelming. I love the smell of wood, fresh cut lumber and such. Summertime always smells to me a little like death because more animals die on the roadways and the heat makes their smells carry a long way. You can learn a lot about a person from the smell of their breath. I'm very fond of the scent of fresh roses, but I don't really like anything 'rose scented'; it's just not the same. I ate a chicken patty from McDonald's once that had the same smell as something I had eaten decades earlier in grade school cafeteria (though that's one of the only times I've ever had a scent 'memory'). The reason I'm mentioning this is just to try and give you a sense of how complicated smells can be for people.

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